Does a crisis change news habits? A comparative study of the effects of COVID-19 on news media use in 17 European countries

Autor(en)

Peter van Aelst, Fanni Toth, Laia Castro, Václav Stetka, Claes de Vreese, Toril Aalberg, Ana S. Cardenal, Nicoleta Corbu, Frank Esser, David Nicolas Hopmann, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Jörg Matthes, Christian Schemer, Tamir Sheafer, Sergio Splendore, James Stanyer, Agnieszka Stępińska, Jesper Strömbäck, Yannis Theocharis

Abstrakt

Exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic unleashes multiple fundamental questions about society beyond public health. Based on the classical concept of ‘need for orientation’ and the literature on the role of the media in times of crisis, we investigate to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic affected news consumption in comparative perspective. Based on a two-wave panel survey in 17 mostly European countries, our study targets the role of both legacy news brands (TV, radio, newspapers) and so-called contemporary news media (Internet-based and social media) during this global health crisis. Our results show an overall rise of news use across countries, but only for some types of news media. We find an increase of TV news consumption, and a higher reliance on social media and the Internet for news and information. This indicates that in times of crises and an unusually strong need for orientation, people mainly turn to news sources that are easily available and offer a more immediate coverage. Furthermore, we find the rise in news use to be mainly present among those who already have a higher level of trust in legacy media and among people that were more concerned about the impact of the pandemic.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Zürich (UZH), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Audencia Business School, Loughborough University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Gothenburg, University of Antwerp, University of Amsterdam (UvA), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) , University of Bucharest, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Adam Mickiewicz University

Journal

Digital Journalism

Band

9

Seiten

1316-1346

Anzahl der Seiten

31

ISSN

2167-0811

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1943481

Publikationsdatum

07-2021

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft, 508014 Publizistik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Communication

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 3 – Gesundheit und Wohlergehen

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/389b6a92-f05c-4ff5-bf06-25bd2e6e8b07